• Vulnerable Youth in Richard Wright’s Protest Fiction
• Claire E. Lenviel

The twenty-first-century Movement for Black Lives Teaches us daily about the countless injustices of black vulnerability and, since the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2014, the political power of that same vulnerability to organize protests, drive legislation, and unify a global coalition of antiracist activists. A litany of hashtags like “#drivingwhileblack” or “#walkingwhileblack” illustrates the vulnerable state of merely being black in the United States. Moreover, the disproportionate assault on young black lives—and the youth-led anti-racist movements that follow—exemplify how the age-and race-based vulnerabilities of black youth can be deployed for antiracist protest. Literary protest is no exception. Protest authors like Richard Wright recognized the political power of vulnerability long before our current moment. Interrogating the dialectic between Richard Wright’s protest fiction and the political discourses of the Roosevelt Administration reveals how Wright weaponized depictions of vulnerability by characterizing black youth as the most vulnerable population during an era of unprecedented federal accountability toward the welfare of American youth. The Roosevelt Administration framed national relief and recovery around a discourse of vulnerability with American youth, conceived broadly, as the intended recipients of federal protection. The power behind Wright’s protest lies not only in his tragic depictions of growing up while black during the Jim Crow era but in the discovery that these daily atrocities happened concurrently with a years-long, federal, multimillion-dollar effort to protect and support youth from the ongoing threats of the Great Depression.

Wright’s protest fiction frequently depicted vulnerable and victimized black youth both as a form of literary protest and as a vehicle to stimulate protest among the public. Protest, as a political reality and as an artistic genre, used the atrocities of real life to engender civil unrest [End Page 121] and to employ that unrest for reform. Authors of protest literature during the thirties, from Langston Hughes and Marita Bonner to Theodore Ward and Richard Wright, often depicted young, black protagonists facing the conditions of economic exploitation, abject poverty, and racial violence to mobilize audiences. Characterized by a return to realism, an unapologetic critique of racism, and often a valorization of the masses, protest literature reinforced the cultural shift toward politically motivated civil unrest. Alfred Kazin and William Stott, for example, propose that writers of the thirties turned to documentary, not fiction, as the ideal form for offering a critically reflexive American consciousness. African American protest authors likewise demanded that “practitioners of democracy truly . . . live up to what democratic ideals on American soil mean” (Harris). They often employed real historical events or the genre of social realism as a mirror to reflect American injustice and the insufferable conditions of everyday life for the marginalized and exploited. Protest literature, then, is what Paul Lauter calls “a social dynamic,” one that allows an author like Richard Wright to position black youth as both marginalized by American politics and central to its reform (12).

Protest, therefore, has always had a close relationship with vulnerability, for vulnerability serves as both the catalyst for social activism and the evidence of that activism’s necessity. Contemporary scholars of vulnerability agree with the term’s potential to critique dominant discourses, particularly as activists and authors like Wright translate it into political agency. For example, Judith Butler’s 2016 publication of Vulnerability in Resistance takes as its foundational given the feminist potential of recognizing how vulnerability exists within strategies of political resistance.¹ In African American Novels in the Black Lives Matter Era, E. Lâle Demirtürk addresses the significance of revisiting vulnerability’s relationship to protest, particularly in the current era. Through an analysis of “racialized vulnerability,” Demirtürk “aims at revealing the black people’s transformation of the power of racialized vulnerability into a political strategy for social change to enhance democracy” (4). My work shares this objective, but where Demirtürk illustrates how black characters grapple with performative whiteness [End Page 122] through an interrogation of racialized vulnerability, I argue that Wright put vulnerability to a slightly different use. Wright used vulnerable black youth as an indictment...

• 理查德·赖特抗议小说中的弱势青年
• 克莱尔 E. Lenviel

Ť他二十一世纪的中号为ovement乙缺乏大号艾夫斯牛逼eaches我们每天都有关于黑人脆弱性的无数不公正现象，以及自 2014 年黑人生命问题运动出现以来，同样的脆弱性在组织抗议、推动立法和团结全球反种族主义活动家联盟方面的政治力量。一连串诸如“#drivingwhileblack”或“#walkingwhileblack”之类的标签说明了在美国仅仅是黑人的脆弱状态。此外，对年轻黑人生命的不成比例的攻击——以及随后由青年领导的反种族主义运动——证明了黑人青年基于年龄和种族的脆弱性如何被用于反种族主义抗议。文学抗议也不例外。像理查德·赖特 (Richard Wright) 这样的抗议作家早在我们当前的时刻之前就认识到脆弱性的政治力量。质疑理查德赖特的抗议小说与罗斯福政府的政治话语之间的辩证法，揭示了赖特如何通过将黑人青年描述为最脆弱的人群来武器化对脆弱性的描述，因为在一个前所未有的联邦对美国青年福利负责的时代。罗斯福政府围绕美国青年的脆弱性论述制定了国家救济和恢复计划，美国青年被广泛认为是联邦保护的预期接受者。赖特抗议背后的力量不仅在于他对吉姆克劳时代黑人成长的悲惨描述，还在于发现这些日常暴行与长达数年的联邦，

赖特的抗议小说经常将脆弱和受害的黑人青年描述为文学抗议的一种形式，也是刺激公众抗议的工具。抗议作为一种政治现实和一种艺术流派，利用现实生活中的暴行来引发内乱[结束第 121 页]并利用这种动荡进行改革。三十年代的抗议文学作者，从兰斯顿休斯和玛丽塔邦纳到西奥多沃德和理查德赖特，经常描绘年轻的黑人主角面临经济剥削、赤贫和种族暴力的情况，以动员观众。抗议文学的特点是回归现实主义、对种族主义的毫无歉意的批评以及对群众的评价，加强了文化向出于政治动机的内乱的转变。例如，阿尔弗雷德·卡津 (Alfred Kazin) 和威廉·斯托特 (William Stott) 提出，三十年代的作家将纪录片而非小说作为提供批判性反思的美国意识的理想形式。非裔美国人抗议作者同样要求“真正的民主实践者。. . 不辜负美国土地上的民主理想意味着什么”（哈里斯）。他们经常以真实的历史事件或社会现实主义的流派为镜子，反映美国的不公正和被边缘化和被剥削者难以忍受的日常生活条件。那么，抗议文学就是保罗·劳特所说的“社会动力”，它允许像理查德·赖特这样的作家将黑人青年定位为既被美国政治边缘化又是其改革的核心 (12)。

因此，抗议一直与脆弱性有着密切的关系，因为脆弱性既是社会行动主义的催化剂，也是该行动主义必要性的证据。当代脆弱性学者同意这个词有可能批评主流话语，尤其是像赖特这样的活动家和作家将其转化为政治能动性。例如，朱迪思·巴特勒 (Judith Butler) 2016 年出版的《抵抗中的脆弱性》( Vulnerability in Resistance)将其作为其基础，因为女权主义有潜力认识到政治抵抗战略中如何存在脆弱性。¹在黑人生活问题时代的非裔美国小说中, E. Lâle Demirtürk 阐述了重新审视脆弱性与抗议关系的重要性，尤其是在当前时代。通过对“种族化脆弱性”的分析，Demirtürk“旨在揭示黑人将种族化脆弱性的力量转化为促进民主的社会变革政治战略”（4）。我的作品与此目标一致，但在 Demirtürk 说明黑人角色如何通过对种族化脆弱性的审讯来应对表演性白人[End Page 122]的地方，我认为赖特将脆弱性置于略有不同的用途。赖特使用脆弱的黑人青年作为起诉书......